Kris Wood

Kris was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, and carried her locally-grown goodness and prowess everywhere. She was accepted at MIT but went to but went to the University of Iowa, where she graduated in 1971. A few weeks later she learned Transcendental Meditation, and within a year she was off to TTC in Fiuggi, Italy.

When she returned, she taught TM for a year in South Bend, Indiana, the came back home to Des Moines where she taught TM for another nine years, the last four as the chairperson of the Des Moines TM Center.

From there it was a short drive to MIU to join the legendary CEG program, where she earned a master’s degree in higher education administration while working as the Associate Registrar.

In 1986, on earning her MA, she became the Registrar and a member of the MIU faculty. She would serve in this role, with great proficiency, professionalism, and heart, for a dozen years.

In 1998 she became the Director of the Research in Consciousness office, where she supported students’ personal development through their TM practice and its supporting programs.

In December 2024, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award for her decades of outstanding service to the university.

Kris

She’s great (which of course includes good)
From registration to cap, gown, and hood

Hour by hour
She’s organizing power —

We’re speaking, of course, of Kris Wood

She’s flexible, highly adept
She’s worked while most others have slept

Invincible, unshakeable
Truly unbreakable —

Our records are very well kept

We’re secure when Kris is about
Success is not ever in doubt

But a year from today
They finally will say

Kris Wood has at last been psyched out*

Kris is the best in the biz
A genius, an ace, and a whiz

Kris, though she’s boss,
Is not crass or cross —

Bubbles of bliss? She’s pure fizz

From her lair in southeast 402
She shepherds a marvelous crew

She’s great and she’s good
Let us all knock on Wood —

There’s nothing she can’t or won’t do

How she does it, no one quite knows
But her attention is great, and it shows

From the large to the small
She attends to it all

If 402’s a garden, she’s the rose

With caring attention from Kris
Nothing is ever amiss

We know what she’s made of
This Iowa native —

Self-interacting pure bliss

September 23, 2006

*Refers to her desire to enroll in the PhD program in Psychology, which circumstances ended up not allowing.